I always enjoyed it when my mom made this dessert. As a kid I loved the different colors and shapes that you can create with this recipe. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Pick 3 or 4 flavors of Jell-o (you can make any colorful flavors you like. The more colorful, the cooler it will be)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 can table cream (creme de leite-you can find this in the International isle)

1 pkg of unflavored gelatin

Water

Prepare each jell-o according to package directions. Usually you use 1 cup of hot water, dissolve the jell-o then add 1 cup of cold water.  Pour the liquid into a dish. I used a 9×13 pan.  Refrigerate until it hardens.

Cut the jell-0 into squares. You can be creative here and cut them into different shapes if you like.

Put all the cut jell-o together into a serving dish and set aside. Once again any shape. I make one in a 9×13 pan and a small one in a cup.

Prepare the white Jell-o:

Take 1/2 cup of hot water and dissolve the unflavored gelatin.

Add the sweetened condensed milk and table cream.

Mix well.  Pour this mixture on top of the prepared dish of cut jell-o.

Refrigerate until it hardens.

This is how it looks when it is cut! Fun huh?

Enjoy!

Recently, we went on a trip to Bear Lake in Garden City, Utah with some friends. What a fun, relaxing time.  Isn’t it great to spend time with friends and family at a beautiful location.  Bear Lake was just over the top great!

Amongst all the swimming, relaxing, site seeing, movie watching, playing games, cooking and eating… did I mention eating… all the tastey food!!!….,  we did make a little trip to Logan to the Cache Valley Cheese and Aggie ice cream place for a tour.

Mr. Randall  Bagley, Associate Director and Dairy Plant Manager, welcomed us and taught us about how they make their cheese.   Did you know it takes an average of  1,500 gallons of milk  to make  150 lb of cheese? Wow! That is a lot of milk! Their cows are milked twice, everyday.

We also were able to sample 3 of their cheeses.  First up was a delicious smoky Swiss called Old Ephraim; very mild and just amazing.  Next, a Jalapeno cheddar; very good. But, my favorite was their award winning  cheddar!  Old Juniper, an aged cheddar cheese that won first place on the Idaho Milk Produce Association. A very tasty cheddar cheese indeed!

After our cheese tour, we decided to try some of their ice cream. Yum!  Every time we go to an ice cream store, my son asks for “blue ice cream”, not sure where he saw this… or why he asks for it, but he was lucky at the Aggie.  They have a very milk blue mint ice cream.  Needless to say my son was very happy.

If you are ever in Logan stop by and check them out.   Enjoy!

This has been a busy festival weekend!  We had an amazing time at the  Greek Festival last night, which goes through Sunday! and YES I am going today again!  This will make up for the time we missed it last year.

Today is also the Brazilian Festival at the Gateway Mall.  You cannot miss it.  I plan to spend the whole day jumping from festival to festival, enjoying company of friends, music and amazing food!

Here is a sample of what the Brazilian Festival has to offer this year!  Hope to see you there!

Taste Of  Home Cooking School is coming to Utah!

If you missed it last time, here is another chance. It is a fun event.  Last time Taste of Home Cooking School was here, I was able to help out in the kitchen preparations and I had a lot of fun. I hope you get to join us this time around.

The Daily Herald and Thanksgiving Point ‘s Taste of Home Cooking School will be on Tuesday September 14th at the Show Barn, Thanksgiving Point.  Here are the details for the show:  Taste of Home Cooking School.

Also held over to savvyshopperdeals.com to enter to win free tickets to the event!!!! Thanks Amy 😀

The Greek Festival started today!  I love this festival. We were introduced by friends of ours many years ago. Since then I’ve only missed it once because we were in Brasil at the time.  That happened last year. So this year it is almost like I am twice as hungry for their delicious food.

I will post pictures for sure! But I wanted to give everyone a heads up on an online coupon for free admittance to the festival!  Yes, more money to spend on food 😀

Thank you Zion’s Bank for the free admission!  Now lets go get some FOOD 😀

A couple weeks ago, a friend and I got together to bottle some peaches. We also made peach honey and we loved it.  I had a variety of plums at my house and we just weren’t eating them.  So, I figure I would try to make some plum honey and see if it worked out.  I really enjoyed the taste and texture.  It is a very good spread for breads. Also, if you thin it out, it makes a great glaze for cakes and such.

First you will need a bunch of the fruit; in this case plum. Wash and cut them. Boil with a little bit of water and about 1/2 cup sugar.

Let is boil until most of the fruit turns into a mush.  Then strain it to obtain the juice.

Make sure to scrape the bottom of your strainer.

Measure the amount of juice you have and pour it into a sauce pan.  Bring it to boil on medium heat and add 1/2 of the amount of juices of sugar (ex if you had 2 cups of juice, add 1 cup of sugar).  Cook until it starts to thicken. Mix constantly.

Keep mixing often until it gets very thick.

You can now pour into jars and process the jars, or just keep jars in the fridge.

YUM!

If you receive the Sunday paper, yesterday you most likely got a $1/3 coupon for Libby’s vegetables . This means that you can get 3 cans of vegetables for FREE at Maceys!!!  Since I signed up for 5 copies of the Sunday paper, that means I get 15 cans of vegetables for FREE! Isn’t that sweet? 

Thanks Savvyshopperdeals.com! Check them out, they also have a link for a printable coupon $1/3 cans of Libby’s from redplum! 

Love Freebies!

If you have questions about signing for the Daily Herald, Salt Lake Tribune or Deserets News, contact me.  I can get you an exclusive discount!

Brazilian Beans

2 cups beans (black, red or pinto beans)
4 cups water (or more)
1 medium size chopped onion
4-5 cloves of garlic
3 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper
Green onions (optional)
Optional:  cut bacon (or Canadian bacon) or 1 sliced Portuguese sausage

How to make it:
Cover beans with water in a pressure cooker, (water level should be about 2-3 inches above the beans). Close the pressure cooker and place at medium heat. It will take about 30-40 minutes to cook the beans after the pan is pressurized (steam starts blowing out).  After the beans have cooked,  let the pressure cooker cool completely before  opening it to check if beans are soft enough. If they aren’t cook for longer. The whole process takes about 1 hour.
Note: ALWAYS wait for your pressure cooker to cool down before you open it!

If you don’t have  a pressure cook, let the beans soak overnight and use a sauce pan to cook the beans.  Same process, just cover them with water (about 2-3 inches above the beans). Cook until beans are soft.

Here is where the Brazilian part comes from….

In a sauce pan saute the garlic and onions with the oil.  Add the boiled beans, salt, pepper and green onions. Let the beans cook until liquid gets thicker.  It will take about 20-30 minutes.  Taste for seasoning; if needed add more salt.

You could also add the bacon/sausage during this time.

If your sauce is not getting thicker, smash about 1/4 cup of the beans with a fork and mix it with the rest.

I have been talking about rainbows with my son, telling him stories, etc.  I thought it would be fun to make a rainbow cake with him.  He is always cooking with me in the kitchen. This was a fun, messy project. Just as any project with a 2 year old would be.  I saw this idea online in many other blogs and decided to try it.

Rainbow Cake:

For the cake: (you may use a box of yellow or white cake mix)

6 eggs

2 1/2  c sugar

3 c flour

1 T baking powder

1 1/4 c milk or water

1 t vanilla

8 T butter (melted)

Mix the milk (or water) with the butter and vanilla. Set aside.  Using an eletric mixer, beat the egg whites until soft peaks. Add the yolks, one at a time. Mix in the sugar until fluffy.  Add  1 cup of flour and 1/2 of the liquid mixture.  Keep doing this until all the flour is used.  Stir in the baking powder.

For the Colors:

I used gel colors from Wilton. They give a nice vibrant color.  You may also use liquid if you want.

You will need the colors of the raibowl: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (I used the same for the last 2 colors)

Divide the cake batter until 7 containers and color each one with its color.

Spray a cake pan with oil and dust it with flour. Then add the colors one by one on top of each other.

Bake for about 35- 40 minutes or until cake is done.

You may decorate as much as you want. I decided to leave my without a frosting. I used a little bit of orange juice and sugar to make a syrup and drizzled that on top of the cake.

My son had a lot of fun making this with me. He is still asking for the rainbow cake every day!!!

I love pesto sauce. I usually plant Basil, however this year I was not very lucky. I planted my beautiful basil and they were going great, until a little dog of mine decided to eat it all!  And I never got to go plant more… busy summer! However a dear friend of mine gave me some of her delicious fresh sweet basil and this is what happened to it:

Pesto Sauce:

2 cups basil leaves (you may also use the flowers)

2/3 c toasted pine nuts

5 clothes of garlic

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/4 c shredded Parmesan cheese

1/3 c olive oil (may need a little more)

Wash and dry your basil leaves.

In a sautee pan, toast the pine nuts slightly.  Keep an eye on it!

This time I used my Magic Bullet, but usually I make this on a food processor. Add the basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan, salt and pepper.

If you are using the magic bullet add the olive oil with all the other ingredients. You may need to add a little bit of water just to get things going, pulse until it is all mixed.

If using a food processor, mix the ingredients and slowly add the olive oil until it all blends in nicely.

I love to use pesto sauce for sauces (if you want creamy add a little bit of cream or Alfredo sauce to it), pizzas, shrimp. It is also a delicious spread for toast.  Enjoy it!

PS: This is a very strong pesto. That is the way we like it in our house 😉